Creative Software

Tutorial 5

Tutorial 5

In this final tutorial, we will learn about the add-ons: New Chord, New Step, New Note and the utility device: New Stop.

New Chord

With New Chord, you can, as you’ve probably already guessed, make chords. Add an instance of New Chord behind New Path in the effect chain. Since New Path uses CC messages to communicate with the add-ons, the add-ons need to be always on the same MIDI track and always behind the instance of New Path you’re using.

First we’ll make two chords. Use the preview button (1) to listen to the notes you’ve selected. Use the trigger button (2) to hear the full chord. Use ‘pitch’ to transpose the whole chord. Use ‘velocity’ to make the whole chord louder or softer, but keep in mind that you can choose a different velocity for each note depending on where you click on the note. This is called ‘dynamic’ velocity. To give all velocities a fixed value, click on the dynamic/static switch and change the value underneath it. Use duration to change the length of the chord. Use flush to deselect all notes and start with a new chord. Use the arrows next to it to change the octave of the keyboard.

Now let’s make a second chord by clicking on the up arrow on the upper right corner. You can make 8 chords per New Chord instance in total.

To let the chords be triggered by New Path, go to the fourth page of the matrix. In every cell, you’ll find two numbers, the first is the channel. Use the same channel you use on the New Chord device you would like to trigger. Use channel 0 to make sure the cell won’t send any cc messages. The next number is the Action number, in case of New Chord this will be the chord number. The text appearing underneath is something you can ignore for now, as it will only become useful with the other add-ons.

To have a shape send only its cc messages to add-ons, mute the note output in the first tab of the device. In case you would like to mute cc messages all together for a particular shape, you’ll find the on/off switch underneath the ‘note’ switch.

In case you need more than 8 chords, you can add a new device and use the offset dial. Set it to 8 and the chord numbers will now range from 9 to 16.

New Note

The next device we’ll discuss is New Note. With New Note you can make a sequence of up to 32 notes. Every note can have a different length and velocity which you can adjust with the menu above the sequence.

Once you’ve made a sequence, you can use different action commands to control it. Try them out by clicking the buttons next to the corresponding numbers. The first three are the basic actions to go through the sequence. The next three are the same as the first ones except there will be no notes played. Notice that the reset is a bit different here. Since it didn’t play the first note it will still wait for an action to play it, while the first reset has already finished playing note 1. The last section contains the different ways to play, stop and pause the sequence. ‘Play’ will start the sequence wherever it has stopped, ‘play start’ will always play from the beginning of the sequence and play/pause is one button to pause and continue while ‘pause’ will only have one function and thus it works only when the sequence is playing. Finally, stop will stop playback of the sequence, but it also resets the sequence to the beginning.

You can change the note values on the bottom. Here you can also set it in time mode.

Now use New Path to send these action commands. As you can see, the text bellow tells you which action you’ve picked exactly. Both New Note and New Step work with the same actions, only New Chord is the exception. As stated earlier, with New Chord the action numbers are the chord numbers which means you can ignore the text underneath. To use New Note while using our previous instance of New Chord at the same time, let’s set it to input channel 2.

New Step

Finally we have New Step. New Step works in a very similar way to New Note. The difference is that it will send parameter values instead of notes.

Click on map to map up to four different parameters to New Step.

Now choose an amount of steps up to 32 and draw a sequence. Try the different commands to see the effect.

New Step has an extra dial: ‘ramp time’. Use it to set the amount of time it takes for New Step to transition to the value of the next step, similar to ‘parameter time’ on page four of New Path. You can set ramp time both in time and note values. To make sure the ramp time and the time between the steps, when using ‘play’, are the same, you can use the lock symbol. This will result in a perfect, smooth sequence of values without any gaps.

To use New Step while using our previous instance of New Note and New Chord at the same time, let’s set it to input channel 3. In New Path we can now make new actions while using channel 3. In fact, many instances of any of the add-on devices can be used this way. If you want to send separate actions, you will have to use multiple channels. In case you would like to send one action to multiple add-ons, you simply use the same input channel.

You can use add-ons in both serial and parallel set-ups with the help of Live’s MIDI Effect Rack. When you use them serially, make sure ‘MIDI thru’ is on to let all the messages through. ‘MIDI thru’ is on by default.

Sometimes plug-ins, for instance Kontakt and Synplant, use cc messages as well. To make sure New Path’s cc messages won’t interfere with other plug-ins and result in unexpected behavior, you can turn off ‘MIDI Thru’ of the last New Path add-on. Or you can use New Stop. New Stop is a simple utility that will put a halt to all cc data passing through. You can open or close the gate by clicking on the main symbol.

On the main tab of the device, you will find one last feature. On the right you can increase or decrease the channel and action values read out from the cells. In this way you can make one shape send all actions to channel 1, while another shape will send all its actions to channel 2. Or you could make a shape interpret all forward step actions as backward step actions.

Also, don’t forget that you can use the Rules system to send cc messages to add-ons as well.